At last, the pamphlet was the mode on which I determined: and it was
begun with all the enthusiasm that the accumulating circumstances
could not but inspire, in a being constituted like me. Eager after
every species of aggravation, my anger could never be hot enough; the
gall of my ink was milk to that of my heart. The bitterness of my
feelings was tormenting; words that could burn, contempt that could
kill, shame that could annihilate, these and nothing less could
satisfy me. Could the serpent revenge fly, how would it dart and
sting! Happily for man it can only crawl. That I had been treated
with great injustice was true: but of justice my notions were very
inadequate; of revenge I had more than enough for a nation.
While hot in the pursuit of this task, I was diverted from it by
the publication of an answer to the articles. The moment I saw it
advertised, not sufficiently habituated to the vice of indolence
myself to recollect that I had an idle footman below, I hurried to
the publisher's, purchased it, and returned with a greyhound speed to
devour its contents.
Disgusted as I was with the members of the church, and beginning even
to doubt of the perfect orthodoxy of the church itself, I still had
too high an opinion of my own arguments to imagine the wit of man
could overturn them.
My haste had been so great that I had not taken off the paper, in
which the pamphlet was wrapped; and in the shop I had read no more
than the title-page. What was my surprise when snatching it from my
pocket and opening it, I discovered, at the conclusion of a short
preface, the name of Turl! it's author!
My emotions were confused. At one moment an answer from him was what I
wished; the next it was something like what I feared. In all argument,
I had hitherto found him so cool, so collected, and so clear, that, to
my imagination, he perhaps was the only man on earth fit to cope with
me. But the grating question, 'Was I fit to cope with him?' would
now and then recur. I could not but feel that I had, in a certain
manner, been subdued and cowed by his greater extent of knowledge,
perspicuity, and masculine genius. By thoughts like these my anxiety,
if not my ardour, was increased, and I began to read.
My forebodings were fulfilled. The impotence of my arguments was
exposed, their absurdity and self-contradiction ridiculed, their evil
tendency demonstrated, their falsehood rendered odious, and the author
of them treated like a child. My self respect was wounded at every
line, each paragraph was a death stab, and I never before felt myself
so completely ridiculous.
As a lesson of philosophy it was the most serious, salutary, and
impressive I ever received; for though, while reading, I affirmed to
myself that every thing urged against me was weak, or ill founded,
inconclusive, or absolutely false, yet the arguments returned with
increasing and reiterated force, haunting and oppressing me like a
painful dream from which I could not awake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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